I have a second blog, Writopia which focuses on Dan Brown's pattern of falsehoods and embellishment of his personal achievements.

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

The Nature of Forensic Evidence - Don't Get Distracted by the Fancy Dancing

The case against The Da Vinci Code has many different parts, but one of them is forensic evidence, specifically forensic linguistics. And like any case built upon the accumulation of forensic evidence, those parts of my case based on forensic linguistics must be considered as a whole.

If you look at a forensic case like the Atlanta Child Murders, it would be very easy for defendants to try and deconstruct things (as Random House is doing with my case) and focus on one single hair, one single fiber.

Focusing on that one hair (or three or four) among hundreds, the defense will try and make a big deal out of it AS IF it is the only piece of evidence to be considered. If a defense attorney can distract people into BELIEVING that this is the only hair that matters, then they have the opportunity to subvert the process of finding the truth.

In reality, the forensic part of this case -- like any other forensic case -- is built piece by piece by piece. And in cases like this there comes a time when, according to experts such as John Olsson of the Forensic Linguistics Institute, so many pieces accumulate that it is simply not believable that they all "just happened" by accident.

Random House and its supporters attempt this sort of distraction time and again, focusing on just one piece of an incredible chain of remarkable similarities, failing to address all of the others, in hopes they will distract you from the overwhelming nature of the evidence.

The forensic part of our case does not hinge on one item or ten or twenty. For the sake of argument, we could throw away every such focus of distraction and not weaken the overall case.

For, when it all comes down to it, how can all those similarities in characters, plot, themes, motivations, action sequence, symbolism and all the rest have "just happened" by accident?